I was preparing a profile for the Gaw on my website for the Iron Mustang series when I popped over to the Japanese wiki for some info scrounging (after dealing with some dubious info from the Ship and Aerospace Plane Encyclopedia) when I noticed some strange info I couldn't confirm:

"Around 40 craft were produced by the end of the war. Although there were a few variations due to a difference in equipment, the most basic model number of the early type is ACA-01."

Does anyone have any idea where this information is from? I find forty units to be very, very implausible... Then again, what in the world of Gundam isn't. This book also claims the Gaw is 62m long, which isn't possible given that the 1/1200 scale model would be incorrectly sized... I'm sure forty units could work given the fact that we see them at Odessa all the time... *shrug*

Forty units doesn't sound unreasonable to me; the California Base musters at least a dozen of them for the Jaburo attack (or as many as 18, if you consider EB 39 some kind of a reliable source .

I've never come across this precise figure, though, or the ACA-01 model number. Hate it when people don't provide sources for their info!

As for the Gaw's dimensions, the 62m length comes from the Roman Album Extra series, which (for reasons unknown to me) Gundam Officials chose as a primary source for vehicle specs, in preference to actual Sunrise-provided numbers. Most subsequent Japanese publications have just cribbed from Gundam Officials and listed its length as "50 or 62 meters".

As discussed in this thread, however, based on the things we actually see going into the Gaw's hangars - such as Komusai capsules, mobile suits, and Dopp fighters - the length of 147.4 meters listed in the old Mobile Suit Gundam Story Book series seems much more plausible, and this latter figure has been widely embraced by a lot of the online fandom. For example, that's the length they list on the Japanese Wikipedia page, although as usual they don't say where they got the number.

Forty units doesn't sound unreasonable to me; the California Base musters at least a dozen of them for the Jaburo attack (or as many as 18, if you consider EB 39 some kind of a reliable source .

And let's not forget the Gaws used by Garma's forces early on, though their numbers vary by the source:

-In the TV series we have Garma's Gaw plus 3 more that participate on Icelina's failed attack, for a total of four. All destroyed.-IIRC, when Garma is ambushed by White Base, he is actually accompained by 2 more Gaws, although I don't remember the later actually being destroyed. I will have to confirm later.

In the Zeonic Front videogame, we are told that reinforcements for Odessa (the Midnight Fenrir Corps in this case) were sent through submarines instead of Gaws. Also, in this game we can see that there are still at least 3 Gaws at California Base right before it's recaptured by the Federations' forces. They can be seen in the same mission map where you have to protect and HLV, though on the other side of the map.

I suppose we could also try counting some of the Gaws from videogames, but I don't think those would be very accurate. For starters, the Journey to Jaburo game gives Garma 5 Gaws during his final battle.